sively, even jealously, occupied by Jehovah Himself, and raises the question whether Jesus is not thereby, in some sense, at any rate, identified with Jehovah.^' This question once clearly raised, other phenomena obtrude themselves at once upon our attention. We are impelled, for example, to ask afresh what sense our Lord put upon the words of the iioth Psalm, " The Lord said unto my Lord, ' Sit Thou on my right hand till I make Thine enemies the footstool of Thy feet,'" when (Mk ii^^^^^'"') He adduced them to rebuke the Jews for conceiving the Christ as only the son of David, whereas David himself in this passage, and that speaking in the Spirit, expressly calls Him his Lord? It is not merely the term 'Lord' which comes into consideration here; but the exaltation which the application of the term in this connection to Him assigns to the Messiah. The scribes would have had no difficulty in understanding that the Messiah should be David's " greater son," who should — nay, must — because Messiah, occupy a higher place in the King- dom of God than even His great father." The point of the argument turns on the supreme exaltation of the Lordship ascribed to Him, implying something su- perhuman in the Messiah's personality and therefore in His origin. Who is this ' Lord ' who is to sit at
^- Cf. Streatfeild, T/ie Self-Interpretation of Jesus Clirisi, pp. 92, 93: " What that term meant to the mind of the Jew may be gathered from a study of the prophetic writings, which frequently portray God as the Husband of His people, and denounce the disobedience and idolatry of Israel as spiritual adultery. For any one to speak of Himself as the Bridegroom of the Kingdom was little short of a claim to Deity: the title was an impossible one for man."
1^ Dalman, p. 285: "There would indeed be nothing remarkable in the fact that a son should attain a higher rank than his father, and for the scribes it would not in the least be strange that the Messiah should be greater than David."
Mark's Conception of Our Lord 47
the right hand of the ' Lord ' who is Jehovah, and to whom David himself therefore does reverence? It Is hard to believe that our Lord intended — or was understood by Mark to intend — by such a designation of the Messiah, who He Himself was, to attribute to Him less than a superhuman — or shall we not even say a divine — dignity, by virtue of which He should be recognized as rightfully occupying the throne of God.^* To sit at the right hand of God Is to partici- pate In the divine dominion, ^^ which, as It Is a greater than human dignity, would seem to require a greater than human nature. To be In this sense David's Lord falls little If anything short of being David's God.^^ In estimating the significance of such a passage, we must not permit to fall out of sight the constant use Jesus of the term ' Lord ' In the Lxx version
Identified with of the Old Testament for God.^''' There Jehovah jj. jg " practically equivalent to God (deo^) and Is the rendering of the solemn name of Jehovah."" The writers of the New Testament, and
1* So Dalman {Words, 214) says shortly: "He whom David called 'Lord' was no mere man" (cf. pp. 385-7). Dalman thinks there is no hint of "the two natures" in the passage: this may be doubted (cf. Meyer on Mt 22*^, and Alexander in loc, also Delitzsch on Ps no, p. 185) ; but this need not be pressed here.
IS Cf. Delitzsch, Psalms, iii. p. 189. Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, 101-2, points out that there is no difficulty in supposing that David himself may have anticipated a greater son: "Knowing how far he had himself fallen below the standard of the true covenant king, and how the glory and prosperity of his reign had been marred through the consequences of his own sins, he might thus in spirit pay homage to a greater descendant."
IS Cf. Swete's note on Mk 12^''.
1^ Cf. D. Somerville, St. Paul's Conception of Christ, pp. 295 et seq.
18 Somerville, p. 143. The supplanting of Jehovah by ' Lord ' in the LXX of course rests upon the Ri^ri perpetuum by which Adhonai was substituted for the " ineffable name " in the reading of the Hebrew
48 The Designations of Our Lord